It starred Nicholas Clay as Dr John Cornelius, a psychology lecturer at a provincial university, and Kim Thomson as his partner, Samantha Valentine.

Complementing the occult elements and those of virtual reality, there was a thread of playful, sometimes dark humour running through the scripts and an underlying sexual frisson between Clay and Thomson.

Other regular characters were Professor Owen Griffiths (Alan David) and Phoebe Littlejohn (Carole Boyd, best known for her role as Lynda Snell in BBC radio's The Archers).

Six episodes of Virtual Murder were made and broadcast by the BBC on Friday evenings in 1992:[6] Valuable paintings in art galleries are melting spontaneously, with no evident cause.

[10] Virtual Murder is well regarded in some quarters: for example, the eminent television historian Andrew Pixley, recalling the show in 2002, wrote, "Finally, I thought, somebody had been brave enough to craft a modern thriller which, while captured on videotape, boasted all the style, fun and imagination of the great British film series of the 1960s such as The Avengers and Department S".